The Academy’s manifesto begins: “We are scientists. We don’t blog. We don’t twitter. We take our time.” (In the next paragraph, they admit that they “say yes” to blogging, as well as “the accelerated science of the early 21st century.” They also have a Facebook page.)

Still, they have a serious point: that “science needs time.” Or, as the Facebook page puts it:

“[Slow Science] is based on the belief that science should be a slow, steady, methodical process, and that scientists should not be expected to provide ‘quick fixes’ to society’s problems. Slow Science supports curiosity-driven scientific research and opposes performance targets.”

The devil driving science to haste, according to a “Slow Science Workshop” held in Brussels this March, is its preoccupation with marketable findings.

“Science has come to be seen mainly as a purveyor of technological innovation and increased competitiveness on a globalized market,” the workshop’s web page reads. “This shift not only restricts the choice of research topics and curricula but also threatens the quality of knowledge.” (A lament that Fischer, Ritchie and Hanspach published last year in TREE made ecology labs sounds like sweatshops.)

It’s no surprise that Slow Science was born in Europe, where big lab groups and research consortia have become the rule and young researchers get caught in a spin cycle of endless postdocs, frantically pumping up their publication numbers in order to impress hiring committees.

Loyola, head of the Conservation Biogeography Lab and a professor at Brazil’s Federal University of Goiás, argues that publishing more and more quickly has many benefits. It increases your visibility as a researcher, brings more opportunity for collaboration, and ultimately allows you to raise more money for research — all qualities that are at a premium for scientists in the Global South.

So he urges his colleagues to be as fruitful as they can. And it makes for better science, he says: Pressure to publish more has actually increased the quality of papers — not just in his lab, but at a national scale, in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and China.

Lesson? Perhaps, as with the Slow Food movement itself, the seemingly attractive values of Slow Science — more time for curiosity, conversation, savoring and potential failure — are based on assumptions and privileges that are by no means universal or universally relevant.

Bob Lalasz is the director of science communications at The Nature Conservancy and the editor of the new Cool Green Science. A long-time editor and writer, he was previously the Conservancy's associate director of digital marketing. He now blogs here about the Conservancy's scientific research and on-the-ground work as well as larger conservation science and science communications issues.
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